


Dream within a Dream

by Etheostoma



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Ghosts, I'm Sorry, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Post-Canon, Stream of Consciousness, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:02:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27197557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etheostoma/pseuds/Etheostoma
Summary: Days and weeks come and go, and through it all Javert is trapped within a world of dream and memory until he cannot tell one reality from the other.It is not so much a ghost story as it is a love story.
Relationships: Javert/Jean Valjean
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Dream within a Dream

**Author's Note:**

> Typically, I’m a “happy-endings” type of fanfic author. This is not one of those times.
> 
> Apologies in advance? 
> 
> Some semi-detailed descriptions of drowning, but other than that there shouldn't be anything that merits a warning. Any parallels to Bly Manor are entirely intentional.

A crack of light cuts through the darkness of the void that surrounds Javert, gradually growing in width until it overtakes the darkness, leaving the inspector kneeling in middle of a deserted Paris alleyway. He blinks, disoriented, and stands, knuckling his forehead and closing his eyes as he attempts to place himself.

Deep breath.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Shoulders back.

Head high, chin up.

“I am Javert, Inspector First Class, of the _Prefecture de police de Paris_. It is…1832, mid-summer, and…” He breaks off, frowning, brow furrowed viciously above his prominent nose. “No, blast, that isn’t it,” he murmurs, widening his stance in an attempt to regain some semblance of balance.

Still the street does not cease to spin, and the frost-headed police inspector shakes his head, grasping at his whiskers in agitation. “You are Javert, Inspector First Class, of the Prefecture de police de Paris,” he repeats, voice low with conviction and eyes flitting wildly about the deserted street. “The year is 1832, it is June the 5th—no 6th—and the schoolboy rebellion has been quelled.”

He tosses his head like an agitated horse, the mane of silver-tinged dark hair he has freed from its confines giving further validation to the comparison and following the movement to settle against his shoulders. “That’s not correct either.” White shows prominently around his irises, his eyes wide and wild, teeth bared in a ferocious snarl. “It is 1821, you are police inspector in the town of Montreuil-sur-Mer, and—“

Breaking off with a grimace, he gnashes his teeth, hands falling to his sides and flexing in abject agitation. “Damn it all, _no.”_

The world spins, for a moment, the cobbled street turning on its head, the midnight sky tilting dangerously sideways and the roar of the nearby river rising from the depths to consume him. He drowns for a moment, dry on his feet and surrounded by fresh air, gasping for breath and feeling the crushing crunch of hundreds of kilograms of pressure against his bones.

Chest catching, refusing to expand, collapsing in upon itself, he sinks to his knees, clutching for a lifeline that he instinctively knows is not there. “I—“ he shakes his head. “It is—“ His hand falls to the ground, his torso following, until he is slumped on hands and knees gasping into the street.

The sounds of Paris fade for a long moment, eclipsed by the endless barrage of a hard, coastal wind whipping against stone, the cry of shorebirds echoing in the distance and the too-warm pulse of the noon sun against the back of his neck. He chokes, drowns now on saltwater and brine, clawing in desperation for a rope that he can neither see nor feel in his grasp.

Finally a breath takes, expands, sends air flooding back into his lungs. Coughing, he expels imaginary— _real?—_ water from his lungs, hunches over on his hands and knees and retches into the street. When he is bone dry, nothing left within or without, he straightens, gradually grafting that unbendable spine into a steel-straight column. _“_ I am _Javert,_ Inspector First Class, former police spy and demise of the Patron-Minette.”

Deep breaths.Even breaths.

“I leave no criminal to walk free, no violation unchecked.” 

Long fingers reach to his throat, adjust his cravat and feel for the solid weight of his stock where it curves comfortingly about his neck. “I have come up from nothing to pursue those who _are_ nothing, to follow nothing but the letter of the law, and see that justice is done.” Chains clink as he reaches down and adjusts his handcuffs, thumbs caressing the cold steel.

Then the cuffs are falling from his limp fingers, he is falling, the world is rising around him as he sinks, the water crashing around and up and over his head, engulfs him and sucks him in and down—

— _down—_

_—_ until he comes back to himself with a start and he is limping through the streets of Montreuil in the dead, black and blue and immensely satisfied with himself. The rest of his officers are on their way back to the center of the town, a small smuggling ring in tow, a chest of contraband strapped to the back of a trailing pony.

“Inspector Javert?”

He pauses mid-stride, one foot frozen in the air, halfway to his next step. The words echo strangely in the deserted street, resonant despite the open air, and he frowns to himself even as he redistributes his weight evenly between both feet. It hadn’t happened like this, he had been alone, had gone back to his quarters to stitch up the knife wound in his leg and nurse his bruises in peace.

He had even allowed himself a pinch of snuff and a glass of brandy, indulging in one evening more than he typically would in an entire month.

He had _not_ been met mid-route by none other than Monsieur Madeleine, by the convict-turned-mayor-turned—

—no he was not Valjean, he was Madeleine, _only_ Madeleine, the accusation was false, was—

Suddenly the cobbled street rushes up to meet him. Or, rather, he is falling, crumpling as his leg gives out and his head continues to throb, pounding out a raucous beat as his knee and thigh cave. Face twisting into a grimace, he shifts his body as best he can as he collapses, tilting to land on his less-wounded side and avoid bringing his head to the street.

The thread of his control is frayed, held taut and stretched to the edge of snapping. He no longer knows truth from lie, right from wrong. The world is upside down, inside-out, and all he can register is the tender press of Madeleine’s fingers against his shoulders, the strong grip of his hands as they pull him to his feet and propel him forward, supporting him as the man has always supported others, regardless of origin or orientation.

Javert has but a moment to reflect on this tender touch that he never knew in his life—the comfort of being supported, of being held and valued and _acknowledged—_ before the scene is shifting again, Madeleine-Valjean fading and giving way to an enveloping darkness. The transition is heralded by the sound of booted feet crossing a hard floor, the clank of a cudgel against bars.

He is a grown man looking through the eyes of a child, dark of skin and hair, light of eye, straddling the line between both of the worlds he knows and unable to catch his footing on either side. Beside him, his mother slumbers, her face slack with sleep and a peace she cannot ever know during the daylight hours.

His heart aches, and how has it come to be that he feels such? As a youth it had not bothered him, as a young man he was naught but happy to be free of such circumstance, and as an adult he barely remembers his origins with anything other than scorn. He walked away from that life the instant an opportunity presented itself and has worked hours on end for year after year to widen the canyon between himself and his slovenly beginnings.

And yet now, as a man desperately avoiding his approaching twilight….now he regrets, and aches, and wants nothing more to reach out and grasp at that still-beloved hand, burrow up into his mother’s chest and tuck his head beneath her chin and hide himself from the world.

Buzzing fills his ears, a muted hum that refuses to be quelled. Irritated, confused, he shakes his head, attempting to clear it, yet finds he cannot. Gradually the cool air of the little shared cell fades, the rough scratch of their bed of hay giving way to feather down that he never once has had the means to experience in the course of his life. His mother’s touch is the last sensation to pass, the press of her hand as it curls about his much smaller one a lingering imprint that refuses to fully fade.

Insensate, he hovers between life and death, heart pounding in his chest and veins and ears, a roaring pulse of waves that crash and recede and arrive again. His tongue is lead in the roof of his mouth, his arms and legs weighted by irons at his side.

“You are Javert,” he whispers, staring about himself with eyes that do not see, the world around him black as pitch. “The year is 1832, it is June the 6th, Jean Valjean is—“

And, like a rubber band strung between two points, he snaps, hurtling through awareness to arrive again at that parapet over the Seine, staring down into its foggy depths. The air is thick, heavy with mud and filth and water, and he can taste on his tongue the blood that flows like rainwater along the streets downtown. With the fog rising from its surface, the river appears almost serene, its churning depths and breakneck current belied by the curling, ghostly wisps of smoke creeping up from below.

Mind already adrift, he mechanically stets his hat to the side, climbs up on the parapet, casts himself down without ceremony or pause, and he is falling, dropping like a rock, falling to the rushing waters below—

—but landing, not as anticipated in the the icy clutch of the Seine, but on a plank of wood, his arms bound fast and his mouth sealed shut as though his lips were sewn together with a piece of twine. He watches, bound and helpless and seemingly invisible, as the burly, bearded convict with the numbers 24601 stamped across his skin twists and turns on his own plank, the metal of his chains illuminated by the faintest trickle of moonlight spilling down through the tiny window at the apex of the solitary cell.

A familiar face, one he knows so very well, even behind the growth of beard and grime that covers it.

“Valjean,” he says, or tries to say, though lips that will not move and a tongue that is glued to the roof of his mouth. “Jean Valjean.”

Valjean’s hazel eyes snap open, lock onto Javert’s icy blue with an unnerving clarity, and the world flares white-hot, a burst of starlight that is almost immediately enveloped by a pitch-black vacuum, swallowing sight and sound and all sensation as Javert falls once again.

He wants to scream, wants to swear and rant and rave and expel every iota of anger and irritation that is lying latent, hovering in wait just below the surface of his skin. Turmoil wracks his entire being, keeps him clasped in its icy grip, twisted and contorted and tucked away into a tiny ball, the being that used to be Javert obscured by his discontent.

He floats, limbs strangely weightless, hair and clothes buffeted by a current he can neither see nor feel. His veins are ice, his limbs frosted and frozen, the sightless blue of his eyes stark against the void of his surroundings. Sensation returns in a sudden surge, a flood of feeling bursting forth at his feet and barreling upward, nerve endings set alight in a fit of searing agony.

He screams, or tries to, the sound catching and locking in his throat, bursting forth instead in a series of choking, gasps as putrid water floods his mouth and nose. His body convulses, flailing as he is sucked deeper into the river’s hungry maw, swallowed by dark depths and buffeted by its ruthless current.

His mind splits, shatters and scatters into fragmented pieces.

One, present and dying, drowning and broken in both body and will.

Another, floating incorporeal some distance away, face impassive as he cooly watches his own demise.

Yet another, split between the two, feeling the cold rush of death and the fiery surge of triumph as it finally grips him in its unforgiving embrace.

After all, it has happened before, will happen _again—_ again and again and again, around and around in an endless and unforgiving cycle.

After a time, the Seine relaxes her unforgiving hold and the now-prone body suspended in the water column sinks to the river bed to settle in the silt. Mouth drawn tight, Javert sits perched on a nearby rock, staring down at his corpse with unseeing eyes. There is no one living to miss him, no one to care beyond perhaps a slight pang of professional regret for the loss of a functional officer.

And yet—

—a flash of steel bursts at the corner of his eye, the cool bite of a knife presses against his neck, the ropes holding him bound slacken and relax—

For the first time in many cycles, Javert’s mind flashes to white teeth flashing in a warm smile on a tanned face wrinkled by age, to a halo of pale hair, to broad shoulders supported between a scarred and unnaturally strong back. He blinks, and the Seine is suddenly gone, and he is dry and warm, and all around are bourgeois in their finery. Broken bursts of life and laughter break free of the monotonous hum of voices, the revelry of the partygoers bleeding through the gilt and gold and glamour, laughter and food a sublime accompaniment to the disgustingly lavish display of wealth.

Nose wrinkling in disgust, Javert sneers and sweeps across the floor, casting a grim figure amongst the finery, the somber cut and color of his uniform and the dark, sweeping greatcoat cast about his shoulders setting him apart from the bright colors of the bourgeois.

“A wedding,” he scoffs seeing the laughing bride clutch at the arms of her groom. The boy gives him a moment of pause, for surely that is the same young man whose corpsehe had helped Valjean deliver, before—

And then he sees the man himself, a little older, a little more worn, a little more tired. He wears the dark bags under his eyes like badges of honor, seeming more his age than another other time that Javert has beheld him. In an instant, he is at the old man’s side, reaching out with icy hands that can no longer feel, gripping for a body wrist that will never know that he is there.

The audacity of the gesture strikes him suddenly, as surely as someone who might land a blow while under arrest, and Javert freezes, hand outstretched and left wanting before ever reaching its intended destination. For him to reach for that scarred wrist, to manacle and attempt to claim this man once again, even now—

Scent and sound shutter, the world going silent as the scene shivers, Javert struggling to retain his grasp on the present. Fists clenched, he focuses on his surroundings, on Valjean, with all of his might, that ever-present so-familiar face bleeding and blurring until it finally settles back into focus.

Pink lips, more likely to turn to a smile than a frown, part in surprise, hazel eyes widening in shock. “Inspector? _Javert?”_

And Javert’s tenuous grasp on reality fails, slides through his trembling fingers like a snake through grass, slipping just beyond reach and leaving him desperately clutching at air. His hazy figure blinks back out of existence, and for a time he knows no more. When he comes back to himself an indefinite time later, weary in a way he has not been since that long day and longer night leading up to his walk to the bridge, he is no longer aware of his surroundings, cannot see beyond the radius of his own personal sphere.

“Javert?” the question jars him from his thoughts, pulls him back from that precipice and plants him solidly in place, and he opens his eyes to the sight of one Jean Valjean again peering down him.

All at once, the world shifts back into focus, every sense that had been dulled settling back into place with a sharp crack. Even before his eyelids flutter and rise, he is aware of his surroundings, the rough bite of the rope against his skin and the muted scream of his contorted muscles anchoring him to the insurgent’s doomed encampment in the tavern. Throat raw, he grates out a jarring mockery of a laugh, wetting his lips with a tongue that is just as dry, tasting old blood and stale sweat as he does.

Of all the scenes he could live again, this might perhaps be the one he would choose least, his mind separated from his body and hovering just off-scene in the small pocket of awareness he had carved out for himself at the onset of his captivity. Aware but not, he floats, diving but not drowning, until his meditation is disrupted by the crack of a rifle and the eventual presence of a man, _that man,_ burly and battered and framed by a halo of white hair.

_Of course._

How many times must he see Jean Valjean before this endless cycle is completed?

He hacks out a wet laugh, blood burbling to his lips—it would seem at some point one of the insurgent’s blows had caused him to bite his tongue. “Jean Valjean,” he rasps, struggling to his feet, “we meet again.”

 _Wrong,_ his mind screams, _wrong wrong wrong._ “Kill me now, coward, and be done with it. Your life will be yours once mine is forfeit.”

But Valjean’s face is kind, and sad, and weary with the weight of even more years than to which he has claim. That is true, that is real, for Javert recalls that from the first time he lived this hellacious loop. And then his face is close, closer than it has ever been, the sheen of sweat bright on his brow and the smell of smoke and gunpowder woven into his hair.

Conscious thought flees, caught in the spell of the moment, and dry, chapped lips are brushing his, uncaring of the blood tinting his own a rusty red. Javert freezes, eyes wide and pupils blown, unable to do anything except clutch uselessly at the sleeve of Valjean’s shirt.

 _This_ was new, this was not real, _this did not happen._

“Go well, Inspector,” Valjean says as he releases him, and then Javert is drawn forward and propelled down the alleyway, relentlessly pursued by the sharp crack of a rifle and a headful of thoughts he cannot quite outrun.

_Emptiness, floating, sinking—_

An indeterminate amount of time passes, Javert unaware of how much, only that it does pass, coming and going and prancing along, he himself no longer tethered to its lead. He awakens, as he is wont to do some times, in a bed, covers tucked around him and his head resting upon a plush pillow, surrounded by the grey of pre-dawn light and entirely unfamiliar with his surroundings.

The hinted-at morning dawns crips and clear, a cool fall sunrise heralded by birdsong and a cast ofinvite shades of pink and gold across a cloudless sky. Javert wakes to a pounding in his head, a stale taste on his lips, and an ache in nearly every major muscle in his body. He groans, rolls over, and freezes, the arm he has flung out to seize the covers instead coming into contact with another body, warm beneath his touch and solid against his side.

Eyes wide, disbelieving, he inclines his head incrementally until he can lay eyes on the slumbering form beside him, takes in the strong form tucked against him. It is, of course, Jean Valjean, and this is new, has never happened—

Javert’s heart jumps to his throat, pounding, tempo far faster than it has any right to be, feeling the curl of thick fingers against his waist where Valjean’s hand rests, fingertips tucked up against the jut of his hip.

“Javert?” the other man’s voice is husky with sleep, his mind still clearly catching up to his body. “Is this a dream?” Valjean shifts on the bed, trails a wondering hand across Javert’s brow. “You were dead, I thought, I read it in the papers, only I cannot seem to get you out of my mind. In my waking moments, I see you, just beyond the line of sight, in my dreams, I can converse with you, learn your mind, truly know _you—“_

He breaks off, blushing slightly, dipping his chin down to his neck to hide his eyes. “I find I have become attached to you.”

Javert shakes his head. “Jean Valjean,” he declares. “I am dead. You know I am dead, I was dead the moment I saw you at the rebel’s camp.” He rests his cheek against the other man’s strong chest, feels the _thump-thump_ of that too-generous heart pulse against his skin. “I believe I was always fated to die, but at least I died after finally knowing _you.”_

He catches Valjean’s hand, squeezes it, feels the rough callouses of his palm and the smooth skin between thumb and forefinger and things to himself this is the strangest hallucination yet, for why would his mind conjure himself in bed with Valjean?

The edges of the room start to blur, a relentless, dark wave of water closing in around them, and Javert jerks in Valjean’s grasp, true terror showing in his eyes. “The Seine is coming for me again,” he whispers, struggling free of the sheets to rocket upright. “You must not let it take you too.” The river snickers, a dark, mocking laugh, and swallows him whole, Valjean’s look of horror lingering to the last as the icy water fills in around him.

It is a rapid-fire cycle for a some time that follows, the fragments of Javert’s mind barely able to catch and retain more than a fleeting moment.

_Flicker._

Cold air, frosty breath, the up-down movement of riding at breakneck speed atop a horse, the barest impression of a kindly magistrate awaiting him at the gates of the town—

_Flicker._

Screams and groans, the harsh crack of the whip through the air, the smooth feel of warm leather at his fingertips, the satisfying burst of pressure as it connects, bites deep, tears through skin and muscle—

_Flicker._

Jean Valjean’s pleading face, eyes bright and fevered beneath the thick layer of sewer muck, the weight of the boy spread between them, the jangle of the horse’s harness at the front of the fiarce, a press of hands between them that he is nearly certain was not there before—

_Flicker._

A heat unlike any he has ever known, stomach twisting and wound in knots, the press of cool lips against his, a warm tongue asking for entrance, hands twisted and fisted in a coarse shirt, tears streaming down his face as he finally _feels_ for the first time in his life, heart aching—

_Flicker._

_“_ Enough!”

Javert falls to the earth, again in the bedroom of his tiny rented rooms, knees throbbing as they hit the floor with a resounding crack, kneecaps and palms screaming as they catch the brunt of his weight. His mind is a whirlwind, thoughts and emotions and sensations churning and roiling, breaking free of his careful compartmentalization to nip determinedly at his heels.

He cannot help himself; he curls in a ball weeping, overwhelmed by everything he has lived and everything he has imagined and every modified memory he has been forced to live again and again as he cycles through this living hell.

“Give me oblivion,” he begs, shuffling up to his knees and staring helplessly up at the stars high in the sky, beseeching and desperate and eroded down to a stump of the rigid oak he had been in life. “For surely that would be better than this constant, looping hell I am forced to live. My memories, _his_ memories, dreams that I cannot tell are mine or his—“ He breaks off, bristling, eyes wild and furious and hands tearing at his hair.

“I cannot bear to know without knowing, to be teased and tempted but never truly granted what it is that is halfway offered. If there is a God, He knows I deserve nothing, that I should be laid lower than the most unworthy wretch, and if that is the case then _do and be done.”_

Breath hitching in a sob, he kneads at his forehead, trying not to think about how it was last another’s hands who had held him, another’s fingers at his temple, how it was Jean Valjean in some imagined, ephemeral world who had comforted him and aided him when he thought all hope was lost and beyond his grasp.

God does not answer.

Every time Javert closes his eyes, every time his focus wanders or his thoughts lose shape, he sees Valjean. Valjean’s eyes, staring back at him. Valjean’s smile, tremulous and barely daring to hope, wondering and reverential, familiar and well-loved. He sees Valjean, hale and hearty despite his age, sees him older and frail, as he as become of late, almost weary and unwilling to go on, if such thing were possible of such a man.

_Jean Valjean._

He has been pulled into Valjean’s dreams, Valjean’s memories so many times that he barely knows his own, can feel _both_ of their identities as surely as they were glued together. Biting his knuckles harshly enough to draw blood, he stares at the grey, empty wall of his bedroom, unable to conjure a single thought or comment. In the back of his mind, he hears that tell-tale trickle of water, the rush of a river and the roar of his own heart. Javert begins to tremble. It is soon, too soon, to be called again, he has barely had time to collect himself, to gather in the far-flung pieces and attempt to pull them back beneath his skin.

“No more,” he croaks hoarsely, shattered, scrabbling for purchase at the threadbare rug beneath him where he kneels. “Please, no more.”

But he blinks, and he is lost, whisked away once again.

This time, the world feels different. The air is cold, and a trace of the old, sardonic Javert must certainly still linger, for he barks out a laugh to find himself once again in Jean Valjean’s home. “Must we play this game again?” he asks, stepping through the now-familiar rooms until he finds himself in Valjean’s bedroom. He blinks, once, flashes away from the present— _Toulon, Montreuil, Paris, the_ river—and then returns, biting his lip hard enough to draw phantom blood.

Gazing down at the prone figure in the bed before him, he feels his wretched heart give a wrench he isn’t certain it deserves to feel. Jean Valjean lies as one dead, face shrunken and body withered, a shattered husk of the man Javert knew him to be. “What is this?” he cries, turning his furious gaze to the ceiling, as though he truly believed he would receive an answer.

“Javert.”

The old man’s voice flicks out and catches him, nooses him as neatly as a lasso, and draws him in until he is kneeling beside the bed. He grips the side of the bed frame, knuckles turning white with the pressure, and bows his head until his forehead presses into the mattress. He can feel the coarse linen of Valjean’s bedsheets against his skin, further evidence of a man living well beneath his means, and wetness prick and sting at the corners of his eyes.

“What ill turn of Fate is this,” Javert murmurs, “that you are dying and alone, without a soul around to bear you company as you pass.”

Valjean grates out a harsh chuckle, knobbly hand rising to curl about Javert’s.

Despite his infirm, his skin is warm, and Javert starts at the press of the other man’s palm about his knuckles. “You—I—“

“Am dead, I know,” Valjean murmurs, squeezing his hand. “Yes, I am well aware, you have haunted by dreams these last long months.”

Javert gapes, out of his element, feels the walls of the room close in about him and feels the cold trickle of water against his toes. Flailing, he shies away from the sensation, curls in on himself and the figure on the bed as he flees the wash and wear of the unforgiving water. “Not yet,” he begs silently, “not yet.”

Eyes wide, frantic, he turns his attention onto Valjean’s prone figure. “You can _see_ me?” he demands, incredulous. “You are aware of me?”

Valjean smiles, eyes kind, a kindling spark of an affection Javert has seen many a time over the course of these last months catching and growing to a blaze. “Oh Javert,” he sighs, little more than a whisper, “You have been a balm to my soul these past months; whatever it is that has tied you to me has been a gift beyond reason and I would not trade knowing you for anything.”

Mouth falling open, Javert searches for words that refuse to come. He settles instead for flipping his hand to catch Valjean’s, curling his large palm about the frail bones and thin skin and squeezing, searching, holding and helping and offering what little comfort and company that he can. How much time passes he cannot tell—he lost that sense when the river claimed him, when he drowned in water and continued to drown in dream and memory, sinking and sinking and never reaching a point of rest.

He feels the bit of him that is left—the tiny smidge of Javert that remains within this hollow, ethereal shell—shiver, flickering as the light that is Jean Valjean gutters and grows dim, a single, slender reed caught in a fell wind. A stabbing pain rips through his chest where his heart used to beat, and he staggers from the bed, crumpling to his knees onto the rough planks of the wooden floor. He shouldn’t feel the pain, he shouldn’t feel _anything,_ yet here he is, heart breaking and knees throbbing, water pooling in his eyes as he stares at the prone figure reclined upon the bed.

Distantly, he hears the door open, sees the dead-not-dead boy and Valjean’s daughter rush into the room. He hears their conversation as if on the opposite end of a tunnel, rather than as a direct spectator, their words muted and static, eclipsed by the growing roar that is rising deep within him. He sees Valjean, radiant with the force of their reunion, a beatific smile growing on that now-beloved face as it beholds his son and daughter again by his side and forgiving of all his past transgressions, both real and imagined.

Javert feels every pulse of blood through Jean Valjean’s veins, every pained and rasping breath, every shuttered pulse of his heart. He feels the candle of Valjean’s life as if it were his own, melted low, worn and guttered, the flame clinging to its wick out of sheer tenacity.

He is weeping openly now, tears streaming unheeded down his face, one palm outstretched toward the man he has, _somehow,_ come to love. He sees Valjean smile again, this time that broad, kind, loving smile reserved only for him—though how he can truly say that when he never saw it in life—sees him lift that venerated white head and shake it, slightly, still smiling. The water is at his feet again and rising, a growing pool gathering around his calves and knees where they rest against the floor. Desperate, he beats it back, batting ineffectually at it as he keeps his eyes locked on Valjean’s.

His heart _twists_ and Valjean blinks once, then those twin hazel pinpricks of soul flicker out, extinguished.

Javert writhes in place, flickers through a thousand lives and a thousand memories and a thousand dreams, torn asunder and rent into pieces. His mouth opens, he breathes out once more, and then—

_Flicker._

He is drowning, sinking, surrounded by dark water and crushed by the cold. He struggles no longer—why should he?—settles at last upon the riverbed where he is left, alone, staring up at the invisible sky.

There should be stars, but there are not—only the relentless pitch-black void of the river and the soulless sky above.

It is still the river, still dark, still cold, still nothing.

_Flicker._

Nothing.

_Flicker._

Nothing—

—and then, despite all reason, there are two stars glittering high above, two solitary pinpricks of light, flickering ever-so-slightly with the wave of the current, staring _back_ at him—

—two green-hazel windows to another world.

**Author's Note:**

> Title shamelessly borrowed from a wonderful Edgar Allen Poe poem.


End file.
